2023-09-11 07:00:00
The beaten-up, broken-down car in the driveway has no tires or rims and leans to one side on its wheel hubs.
All the windows are busted out except for the windshield, which is shattered and caved in but still hanging on.
The interior is in utter disarray, and the exterior is marred by graffiti, including a crude drawing of male genitalia on the driver’s side door.
The home where the car is parked doesn’t look any better. It, too, has graffiti on the walls, both inside and outside. Some of the windows are broken and boarded up, and junk blocks the walkways.
This isn’t some inner city scene. This is Santa Fe — just not the alluring destination the city promotes in tourism magazines.
Neighbors of this house in the 2700 block of Alamosa Drive in the Los Cedros neighborhood, just outside Bellamah, have had enough. They say the home, which was the scene of a fatal shooting two years ago, has long been a blight and a magnet for questionable activity, and the city has failed to tackle the problem.
“I can’t imagine this happening in one of the wealthier neighborhoods — there’s no way,” said a neighbor who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
City officials say they’ve been contending with the home for years, an effort complicated by the owners’ deaths and the current resident’s habit of continually falling out of compliance with city codes following a cleanup.
The neighbors’ concerns continue more than a year following residents plagued by a similar problem property regarding a half-mile away, on Calle Caballero, watched in surprise as crews hired by the city demolished the home’s charred remains. The abandoned structure, littered with evidence of squatters and frequent drug use, had burned in 2020.
City Clerk Kristine Bustos-Mihelcic, who oversees communications and constituent services for City Hall, said at the time the demolition was the “first of its kind” — a test case for how the city might handle chronic nuisance properties under an ordinance approved in recent years that provides more enforcement power.
Bustos-Mihelcic acknowledged the process had been slow for some frustrated neighbors on Calle Caballero, who had complained regarding the property for years.
The Alamosa Drive property also has been on the city’s radar, and efforts are underway to resolve the situation, she said in a recent interview.
“It is a property that we’ve put a substantial amount of resources toward, and there have been multiple notice of violations issued.” She added the property routinely falls in and out of code compliance.
“It’s on our nuisance list, and we are pursuing legal action on the property,” Bustos-Mihelcic said. “We’re working to file the property into court as a nuisance property.”
Since August 2020, the Santa Fe Police Department has received 177 calls for service at the Alamosa Drive home, including one homicide, three domestic violence allegations, five warrant arrests, five alleged narcotics violations, three recovered stolen vehicles and a dozen welfare checks.
The homicide is still fresh on neighbors’ minds.
In the early hours of Oct. 4, 2021, 39-year-old Joseph Aiello was shot in the head during a small party at the home.
“There must’ve been like 10, 15 people that came out of that house that night,” said a neighbor who also requested anonymity.
According to property records, the 1,400-square-foot home built in 1962 is owned by Jose M. and Frances Ortiz, who are now deceased. Neighbors and a grandson of the Ortizes said the deceased couple’s son, Andrew, lives on the property; it’s unclear whether he’s living in the home or in the garage.
The Santa Fe County Treasurer’s Office said the property taxes are paid up, but court documents show the home is in foreclosure.
Efforts to reach Andrew Ortiz by phone were unsuccessful. A reporter visited the home twice. The first time, a couple might be heard arguing inside the garage. The second time, no one answered the door.
“After my grandparents passed away, my uncle decided to … just do whatever,” Nathaniel Ortiz said in a brief telephone interview. “It went downhill.”
Nathaniel Ortiz said his grandparents took great care of their home, which a longtime neighbor confirmed.
“Joe’s probably up in heaven disgusted as hell,” the neighbor said.
Neighbors said they believe the home has no water service or electricity.
“They live in the dark,” one neighbor said.
Public Service Company of New Mexico declined to disclose whether it provides electricity to the home. City Utility Billing Division Director Nancy Jimenez wrote in an email information regarding water service at the address would have to be obtained through a formal public records request.
City Councilor Jamie Cassutt, whose District 4 includes the Alamosa Drive neighborhood, said the property is an example of a bureaucratic process at City Hall that isn’t working.
“I think that our processes really need to be looked at,” she said. “Something has fallen through the cracks here.”
She said the home can serve as a lesson for the city.
“One thing that I’d really like to see with the city both in this arena and in other areas is how we can figure out how to become more proactive instead of reactive, and code enforcement is one of those areas where I’d really like to see this happening,” she said. “Right now, we do have a very reactive model.”
The city filters constituent calls and complaints through a work order system that sees a heavy volume of communication, Cassutt said, adding the city still must be able to address problems before “they start to snowball into a place where then it’s really this larger issue that we’re trying to deal with.”
She said, “It takes a lot more resources, takes so much more staff time and is a much more complex issue than if we had been able to nip it in the bud.”
District 4 City Councilor Amanda Chavez did not return a message seeking comment.
Cassutt, who is running for reelection, said a constituent first brought the Alamosa Drive property to her attention regarding a year ago. She said she started getting an increase in constituent calls a few months ago, which coincides with a posting on the Nextdoor app noting the home had been the scene of a fatal shooting and had fallen into further disarray.
Jason Sena, the city’s code enforcement supervisor, said the home has been a source of complaints for years.
“It started off back in 2018 with litter complaints,” he said. “Now … the yard is a total mess. We got junk vehicles in the front. It’s just been a real, real difficult property to handle. They come into compliance and then we leave them alone and they fall back out of compliance.”
The death of the owners listed on property records complicates matters, he said. “It’s hard for us to send out a notice of violation or anything like that because we can’t find the property owner.”
Sena said he was sympathetic to the neighbors’ plight.
“We have neighbors that keep their properties clean and then we have these neighbors that have their properties in shambles,” he said. “We are very sympathetic. It’s just that it’s a process that we have to go through and sometimes that process takes a while.”
While most neighbors expressed frustration, anger and fear regarding the home on Alamosa Drive, at least one neighbor said he wasn’t bothered.
“He respects us. He talks to us,” the neighbor said, referring to Andrew Ortiz. “He doesn’t bother us. None of his buddies bother us. I make an effort to say good morning to anybody that’s over there, and they say good morning back.”
The man acknowledged the property is a “mess” and sometimes attracts an unruly crowd.
“It’s a little scary, but they leave us alone,” he said. “We’ve never called the police on anybody, but there must be something going on. They’ve had police over there with assault rifles and guns pulled.”
The neighbor said he’s sure the home on Alamosa Drive is bringing down the value of other houses in the neighborhood.
“It’s not the nicest thing to have around, but they don’t bother us,” he said, adding the activity sometimes provides entertainment value.
“Sometimes we’ll sit out here on the front porch, and I’ll say [to my wife]‘Make some popcorn so we can have a show,’ ” he said, laughing. “They have some descriptive adjectives that you just haven’t heard in a while. Then following all that, everybody hugs and kisses each other and life goes on.”
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